THATTA, Dec 8: Speakers at a workshop here have expressed concern over increase in the school dropout rate in the province and suggested various steps to arrest the trend.
The workshop on 'Dropout prevention' was jointly organized by the education department and the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) at the Degree College, Thatta, on Wednesday.
In their speeches, participants said that according to the official record enrolment of boys and girls in primary schools in class one stood at 27,484 in 1998. However, only 7,884 of them could reach class IV by 2002.
This meant that only 29 per cent could reach class IV, while 71 per cent dropped out on one or the other pretext. Consequently, in 1998 the dropout rate was 40 per cent, in 2000-01 38 per cent, while in 2002 it further dropped to 24 per cent. The current dropout ratio stood at 30 per cent, they added.
Discussing reasons for dropout, the participants cited non-cooperation of communities and absence of a follow-up mechanism and said that an effective monitoring mechanism and coordination between education officers and communities could help improve the situation.
They suggested that overage primary students should be identified and their parents should be motivated to let their children continue their studies in schools through Juma sermons. Besides, they said school fees should be reduced, incentives of free books, bags and other print material should be offered to poor families while a keen interest of philanthropists in primary education could yield positive results.
Those spoke on the occasion included Syed Noor Ahmed Shah, Hafizullah Abbasi, Naeem Farooqui, Asif Qureshi, Yousuf Qureshi, Noor Mohammad Baloch, Ms Kulsoom and others.
SCA: The district chapter of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture at its meeting held here on Tuesday expressed concern over suspension of sugarcane crushing by mills.
It said the government should make an assessment of losses farmers would incur due to the suspension of sugarcane crushing. It demanded that the government should exempt the farmers from payment of different taxes and provide them with relief.
The meeting discussed the suspension of sugarcane crushing and its likely impacts on farmers. The SCA said due to the delay in sugarcane crushing, farmers would not be able to cultivate Rabi crops.
It criticized the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association for its decision to suspend the crushing. It said in Thatta alone, Rs164.560 million of farmers of 2002-03 season was outstanding against five sugar mills of the district. It regretted that the non-harvesting of sugarcane on time would further affect the farmers as the weight of the produce would decrease.
It said farmers, particularly in coastal areas of the district, had got a low sugarcane produce due to salinity and non-release of water downstream Kotri. It said the farmers also could not afford required fertilizers.
The meeting said the government had estimated wheat sowing for the current year on 8.2 million acres of land in the country but a large area of land was still occupied by sugarcane. It said only in the Thatta district over 200,000 acres of land were under sugarcane crop.
Criticizing the agriculture policies of the government, the SCA regretted that the irrigation system was ill-planned and there was lack of coordination among policy makers, agronomists and industrialists. It stressed the need for streamlining the agriculture sector.
It said the government had released Rs100 million for conducting research on various varieties of seeds and spent a huge amount on the irrigation system and under other heads but there was no improvement in the agriculture field.
The meeting maintained that the government had imported 600,000 tons of raw sugar and a same quantity of refined sugar from Brazil, India and other countries against the requirement of 500,000 tons. It said this had badly affected the agriculture sector of the country.
It also criticized recent orders of the Board of Revenue to expedite recovery of taxes and other revenue dues from farmers. It demanded that the recovery should be stopped and incentives, including financial assistance, should be given to farmers. It said the price of sugarcane should be increased from Rs43 per 40 kilograms to Rs50.
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